However, it must be distinctly understood that the spiritual and temporal in all cosmogonies, are so intricately interwoven, that it is almost impossible to completely divorce them. Like the Siamese twins, Gods and Governments are inextricably bound together; so much so indeed, that if you kill one, the other cannot live. Hence the open or secret alliance, that has always existed between the politician and the priest.
‘If we only lived as Christ lived, what a beautiful world this would be,’ saith all thoughtless ones. If we lived as Christ lived, there would be none of us left to live. He begat no children; he labored not for his bread; he possessed neither house nor home; he merely talked.
Consequently he must have existed on charity, or have stolen bread. ‘If we all lived like Christ,’ would there have been anyone left to labor, to be begged from, to be stolen from? ‘If we all lived like Christ’ is thus a self-evident absurdity.
After permitting Christ to be butchered, the mob thereupon set him up as their Divinity, and erected altars to his renown. Slaves, women, madmen, lepers, magdalenes, were the earliest Christians, and to this hour, women, children, slaves and lunatics are the raw material of the Christian Church.
Primitive Christianity cunningly appealed to the imagination of a world of superstitious slaves (eager for some mode of escape that meant not the giving and receiving of battle- strokes.) It organized them for the overthrow of Heroic Principles; and substituted, for a genuine nobility based on battle-selection, a crafty theocracy founded upon priest-craft, hell-craft, alms-giving, politicalisms, and all that is impure and subterranean. It is a doctrine at once disgraceful in its antecedents, its teachers, and in itself. Truly has it been called ‘the fatal dower of Constantine,’ for it has suffocated, or is suffocating the seeds of Heroism.
Both ancient and modern Christianism and all that has its root therein, is the negation of everything grand, noble, generous, heroic, and the glorification of everything feeble, atrocious, dishonorable, dastardly. The cross is now, and ever has been, an escutcheon of shame. It represents a gallows, and a Semite slave swinging thereon. For two thousand years it has absolutely overturned human reason, overthrown common sense, infected the world with madness, submissiveness, degeneracy. Truly, there is a way which seemeth right unto a people, but the ends thereof are the ways of death.
>im a living breathing example of why your whole argument is flawed
And how is that, exactly?
Is the Golden Rule a rational rule?
Is it not rather a menial rule — a coward rule — a best-policy rule? Why is it ‘right’ for one man to do unto others as he would have others do to him and, what is right? If ‘others’ are unable to injure him or ‘do good’ to him, why should he consider them at all? Why should he take any more notice of them than of so many worms? If they are endeavoring to injure him, and able to do it, why should he refrain from returning the compliment? Should he not combat them, does not that give them carte-blanche to injure and destroy him? May it not be ‘doing good’ to others, to war against them, to annihilate them? May it not also be ‘good’ for them to war against others? (Again, what is ‘good’?)
Is it reasonable to ask preying animals, to do unto others as they would be done by? — If they acted accordingly would they, could they survive? If some only accepted the Golden Rule as their guiding moral maxim, would they not become a prey to those who refused to abide thereby?
Yeah, that's what I thought… Go on believing in a ideal you cannot even articulate. How sound.
These questions require no formal answering. They answer themselves in the asking. And here it must be remembered that the best test of a witness, is cross-examination. ‘Do unto others as you would have others do to you.’ No baser precept ever fell from the lips of a feeble Jew.
Is it not written, ‘and God sendeth angels to destroy the people?’ — Behold! these men are the ‘angels’ that He sends: — politicians and reformers!
‘Love one another’ you say is the supreme law, but what power made it so? — Upon what rational authority does the Gospel of Love rest? — Is it even possible to practice, and what would result from its universal application to active affairs? Why should I not hate mine enemies, and hunt them down like the wild beasts that they are? Again I ask, why? If I ‘love’ them does that not place me at their mercy? Is it natural for enemies to ‘do good’ unto each other and, what is ‘good’? Can the torn and bloody victim ‘love’ the blood-splashed jaws that rend it limb from limb? Are we not all predatory animals by instinct? If humans ceased wholly from preying upon each other, could they continue to exist?
>Gods real, the devils real, religions try to explain it to us.
Damn, you told me… I stand in awe at your intellectual-prowess. Please forgive me for assuming you were simple-minded.
SLAVE!
Behold the crucifix, what does it symbolize? Pallid incompetence hanging on a tree.
‘Love your enemies and do good to them that hate you and despitefully use you,’ is the despicable philosophy of the spaniel that rolls upon its back, when kicked. Obey it, O! reader, and you and all your posterity to the tenth generation shall be irretrievably and literally damned. They shall be hewers of wood, and carriers of water, degenerates, Gibeonites. But hate your enemies with a whole heart, and if a man smite you on one cheek, smash him down; smite him hip and thigh, for self-preservation is the highest law. He who turns the ‘other cheek’ is a cowardly dog — a Christian dog.
Give blow for blow, scorn for scorn, doom for doom, with compound interest liberally added thereunto. Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, aye four-fold, a hundredfold. Make yourself a Terror to your adversary and when he goeth his way, he will possess much additional wisdom to ruminate over. Thus shall you make yourself respected in all the walks of life, and your spirit — your IMMORTAL spirit — shall live, not in an intangible paradise, but in the brains and thews of your aggressive and unconquerable sons. After all, the true proof of manhood is a splendid progeny; and it is a scientific axiom that the timid animal transmits timidity to its descendents.
Become War.
If men lived ‘like brothers’ and had no powerful enemies (neighbors) to contend with and surpass, they would rapidly lose all their best qualities; like certain oceanic birds that lose the use of their wings, because they do not have to fly from pursuing beasts of prey. If all men had treated each other with brotherly love since the beginning, what would have been the result now? If there had been no wars, no rivalry, no competition, no kingship, no slavery, no survival of the Toughest, no racial extermination, truly what a festering ‘hell fenced in’ this old globe would be?
A god begging his bread from door to door! — A god without a place to lay his head! — A god spiked to two pieces of crossed scantling! — A god stabbed to death by an hired officer! — A god executed by order of a stipendiary magistrate! — What an insane Idea — Is it an Idea, or rather a wasting cranial disease? Talk about ‘the heathen in his blindness’ and superstitious madness in past ages! Why it is as childplay to the hysteric Idolatry of to-day — the deification of a Jew. The ‘Divine Democrat’ was executed upon a government gibbet, because the Rulers of Imperial Rome were more powerful men than he was. His strength, and that of his followers, was not equal to theirs.
He died an abysmal failure — a Redeemer who did not redeem — a Saviour who did not save — a Messiah whipped like a calf — a slave-agitator deservedly destroyed for preaching a Falsehood — the monstrous gospel of Love, Brotherhood, Equality.
Of what use was that ‘pale dreamer’ to the iron-conditions that existed in the conquered and garrisoned Fortress of Jerusalem? For once the city mob were on the right trail, when they petitioned for the release of Bar Abbas, rather than the supple singer of a ‘Sweet bye and bye.’ Bar Abbas is described in ‘the Scriptures’ as a petty thief. He was really an armed insurgent leader — the slayer of Roman tax-gatherers — a guerilla chief (like Rob Roy, Robin Hood, William Wallace, William Tell) who levied toll upon opulent Hebrews for patriotic purposes.
Had I been there that day, I also would have joined in the demand: — ‘Release Bar Abbas unto us.’ — Better one Bar Abbas than a thousand Christs.
Alas! Alas! O Galilean! Thou art neither the Way, the Truth, nor the Light!
Has not mankind had sufficient experience of what politicians are? — Those black-hearted creeping thieves and frauds. Their sting is deadlier than the bite of a cobra, and in the breath of their mouth there is — DEATH. Curses be upon ye, O! ye Politicians, and upon all who advocate increasing your prerogatives!
Presidential candidates, from Jefferson, to Lincoln, (also their apish imitators) have generally indulged in equally shallow rhodomontade, because it means votes, and for votes, office-seekers would dress up in glowing language, and ray forth any devilish deception.
>and everything to do with power and control of the common people,
Hence, why God and government are inextricably bound together. You just made the point of my "retarded analysis", smart-guy.
Thanks. I guess…
They were preached by bare-foot monks at the inauguration of the Dark Ages, in order that those saintly lovers of the common people might creep into the administration of co-operative wealth and power. Now, the same general ideas are revived and dressed up (this time in politico- economic garb) by the eloquent agitator, in order that he may rule and plunder in the future, through the agency of the State; just as the priest once ruled and plundered through the equally rapacious agency of the Church.
When the Church triumphed, the Dark Ages began, and when it is finally rooted out (together with all its social antenæ) the Heroic Age dawns once more. True heroes shall be born again as of old…
The ‘Church’ is the idol of the priestly parasite — The ‘State’ is the idol of the political parasite. Beware, O, America! that in escaping from the holy trickery of the monk, you fall not an easy prey to ‘the loving kindness’ of the politician.
‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,’ those three great lights of Modern Democracies are three colossal Falsehoods, ignoble slave-shibboleths; impossible of actualization even if proclaimed by some superhuman Satan, followed by armed hosts of un-killable demons, all armed to the teeth with flaming swords, Greek-fire, and dynamite cannon.
You may trace Equality in letters of silver on tablets of burnished gold, but without engineering a perpetual miracle, you cannot make it — true.
You may write Fraternity in blazing diamonds on walls of enduring granite, but without reversing the mechanism of the Universe, you cannot make it a fact.
And, though you enscroll Freedom on countless sheepskins and rivet statues of Liberty on every harbor-rock, yet with ‘all the kings horses and all the kings men’ one being born to be a hireling and a subordinate — NO power can free.
Thereupon, toward you, O! America! they, one and all, point the finger of pride! Towards you!
America! Where the politicians rage and the people imagine vain things! — and the dogs in the alleys are — baying at the moon!
Then, turn I away! Sadly! Sadly! Sadly! And I brush against a slave in copper-riveted overalls, hurrying to his mill; and against another in gold chain and silken hat, hasting to his money-changing — and a lean woman in sordid rags, with a pile of lumber balanced upon her crown; and a splendid harlot in diamonds and brilliant plumage rideth slowly by.
Practical fraternal sympathy (upon any universal scale) has always had in the end a most destructive effect upon the internal structure of communities. Men will always love and cherish those that are near and dear to them; but when it is proposed to extend the circle of their ‘near and dear ones’ to all mankind, that is going rather too far. Indeed all must perish ignominiously if that foolish idea prevails. ‘ALL’ are even now enervating themselves, undermining their strength, by futile overexertion in that very direction. They are straining themselves to death, by endeavoring to carry an impossible load. The majority of men are born far too weak constitutionally for their conditions; and the few who do possess the necessary stamina and grit, will have quite enough to do in proving by deeds their fitness to survive, propagate, and possess. Many are projected — few are selected.
To the most inept understanding, could any proposition be placed in a clearer light? Is it not as simple as ‘rolling off a log,’ that the individual who even attempts to become a true and honest Christian must become like unto a tame sheep? What a sublime Ideal? How heroic…